Thrift store finds and crafty things from the butt-end of Europe

Category Archives: Paper Crafting

Few years ago, I made this simple, paper cut Halloween village to decorate my bookshelf. I made it using a craft knife and simple hobby cardstock. The beauty of this is, that you don’t have to be precise with the cutting, the more mistakes there are, the spookier it gets.

This is a very inexpensive craft but at the same time, it is incredibly effective in creating an amazing Halloween atmosphere. To help you to make one just like this, I made a template to guide you. You need an Adobe Acrobat or any PDF reading software, that allows you to print with a poster setting as the village is sized 20*70 centimeters and it spans on three A4s.

There’s a Seven Gypsies’ black thick “book” page as a basis. The harlequin paper is by Carta Bella, the rabbit paper is from Graphic 45’s Halloween in Wonderland-collection and the white rabbit is a print out from the interwebs. My words can’t express, how much I love this piece, so let’s let the pictures speak for themselves.

I began working on this piece at a local craft meet. I had to get creative with the harlequin paper as I only had one, quite narrow piece left. Originally I had a glittered keyhole in the middle but when I got home, I changed my mind about it and decided to add the White Rabbit.

I printed the white rabbit on some cheap watercolour paper and I coloured the bow to match the backing paper. Since I recently acquired a 13-pack of glitter, I had to use the red one to colour the hearts on the Rabbit’s gown. If there’s an excuse to use glitter, one must always take it.

Don’t know about you but I think it’s gorgeous.

Collage technique is definitely something I’m going to look into more. It’s so much fun to mix-and-match things and build a story out of them. Maybe I could make some for a Christmas market I’m attending in few weeks! (Meaning I will be gluing things the night before the market and everything will smell like glue the next day. I’m a professional like that).

-Thrifty Finn-

P.S. Don’t forget, there are free printables available here on Thrifty Finn. A skull and a harlequin patterned craft papers for you to do as you please.

A little bit over a week ago, I posted my Harlekiini-paper for you peeps to download for free. I also posted it on my local craft FB-group and said I’d be happy to take on requests. One of the first ones was a request for a skull paper and here it is! I actually made two versions. Black on white with really small skulls and the white on black with slightly larger skulls. I used a free clip art skull from Graphic’s Fairy to create this pattern. If you don’t know, who Graphic’s Fairy, she’s someone, who has been offering copyright free clip art images on her site for years already. In fact, Ikea has used some of them in their paper collections. I know, because I have the same ones in my clip art stash😀

The files are A4 sized but I recommend printing with scale to fit paper. Also, use grayscale printing and you can intensify the black by running it through your printer twice. ToU…Free to use in crafts made to sell but not to add to digital kits. The download links:

I’ve gotten a good mileage out of the out-of-print Halloween in Wonderland papers. I still have plenty of left for an art piece or two. And then naturally the scraps. Always save the scraps😀 Anyhoo…I’m not an experienced collage maker but I think I made something special over here. I used a cover of a damaged kids’ book as the basis. The edges are covered with black washi (like in the lamp I did) and I mainly used basic crafting techniques such as distressing and fussy cutting for the main part.

All the pics came out really blurry, I don’t know why. Some of my fave details:

Finished piece:

I’m very pleased with it. It will go nicely with the Mad Hatter Lamp in my entry hallway. If you want to do something similar, remember that the Alice in Wonderland illustrations are in the public domain. Combine them with some public domain Halloween images and you are good to go. If you are looking for a diamond patterned paper, you can download the one I designed HERE.

Yesterday, after I posted my Halloween shelf art project, I thought about designing something seasonal and share it for free with you peeps. I went through my digital image stash to look for an inspiration but I actually got one from a Finnish paper crafting group on FB. There’s this one girl, who has been ooh’ing and aah’ing over the harlequin patterned paper I’ve been using in my Halloween projects, so I thought I shall make her one!

See how fancy and graphic looking it is! I even added my logo at the bottom. And the title! Harlekiini means harlequin in Finnish. Rule number in art and design is that you can’t fall in love with your own work, but I already did. Looks totally like it was bought from a shop.

Some tips for printing and ToU…Print in grayscale and print as ‘scale to fit’. If you want really deep black, try running the paper through your printer twice. You can use this paper for physical products you make and sell them, but not in digital collages or kits. It is also okay to take the file to a print shop and have them print it for you. Here is the download link: